KeepsakeWhat documents should a family keep?
What documents should a family keep?
Keep four groups: identity (passports, birth and marriage certificates, national ID), money (bank and pension details, insurance policies, the deed or tenancy), health (prescriptions, allergies, vaccination records, any advance decision), and instructions (the will, its location, and who to call). Originals of certificates and the will stay on paper; everything else can be a scan.
Most "important documents" lists are alphabetical, which is the wrong order. The useful question is not what a document is called but how fast somebody else would need it and how hard it is to replace — because that is what decides whether it belongs in a fireproof box, a scan, or the recycling.
The four groups, in the order they get needed
Identity comes first because almost nothing else can be done without it. A bank, a registrar, a hospital and an employer will each ask for proof of who somebody is before they will discuss anything else, and a family that cannot produce it spends weeks on replacements before starting on the actual problem.
Money is second: what exists, where it is, and who to tell. This is the group people most often assume is discoverable — it usually is, eventually, by somebody with a lot of time and legal authority. Pensions and small insurance policies are the classic losses, because nothing prompts anyone to go looking for them.
Health has the shortest fuse. A list of current medicines, doses, allergies and conditions is worth more in an emergency department at 3am than every other document combined, and it is the one nobody prepares because it feels like the least official.
Instructions is the smallest group and the one that makes the other three usable: where the will is, who the executor is, which bank, which solicitor, which neighbour has a key. A page of that, kept current, saves more time than a filing cabinet of everything else.
What has to stay on paper
Very little, but the exceptions matter. The original will — a copy is not the will, and in England and Wales a will that cannot be produced in its original form can be presumed revoked. Certificates issued by a registrar — birth, death, marriage, civil partnership — where institutions frequently insist on a certified copy rather than a scan. Deeds for unregistered land, increasingly rare but genuinely irreplaceable where they still exist. Share certificates and bonds in paper form.
Everything else is administratively replaceable, which is exactly the distinction worth drawing. A scan of a passport does not get anyone through a border, but it makes the replacement dramatically faster; a scan of a will proves nothing, but it tells the executor what to look for and where.
The arrangement most households land on: paper originals of the short list above in one fireproof, waterproof place that somebody else knows about, and a scan of everything — including those originals — somewhere that survives the house.
How long to keep things
The default instinct is to keep everything forever, which is how a drawer becomes unsearchable and therefore useless. Retention is worth deciding once, because the value of a document falls off a cliff on a knowable date and the cost of storing it does not.
The one asymmetry to respect: tax and property records are cheap to keep and expensive to lack. If you are unsure, that is the category where "keep it" is almost always right, and the rest of the drawer is where you should be ruthless.
What not to keep, and what to shred
Expired insurance schedules, superseded policy documents, utility bills beyond the current year, cash machine slips, and manuals for appliances you no longer own. Anything carrying a full account number, a signature, a national insurance or national ID number, or a date of birth should be shredded rather than binned — those four together are enough to open credit in somebody else's name.
The other thing not to keep, and this one surprises people, is a document you are keeping only because you cannot tell whether it matters. Uncertainty is a decision waiting to be made, and it is far cheaper to make it now — while you still remember what the document was for — than to leave it for whoever opens the drawer next.
The four mistakes that make the whole exercise useless
- Only one copy, in the house. Fire, flood and burglary take the documents at the same moment as everything else, and precisely when you most need to prove what you owned.
- A safe nobody else can open. A fireproof box whose key or combination is known only to the person who is unwell is an expensive way to lose documents.
- Scans nobody can find. Four thousand photographs of paperwork in a camera roll is not an archive. A folder structure and a consistent file name beats any clever system you will not maintain.
- Never revisited. A list assembled once and left alone is wrong within two years — policies lapse, banks merge, executors move house. Half an hour a year is the entire maintenance cost.
The checklist
Grouped by urgency rather than alphabetically. "Keep the original?" is the honest question to ask about each one — it decides how hard you should work to protect it.
| Document | Group | Keep the original? | Typical retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Passport | Identity | Yes — it is the original | Until replaced; keep the old one until the new one arrives |
| Birth certificate | Identity | Yes | Permanently |
| Marriage or civil partnership certificate | Identity | Yes | Permanently |
| National ID card (CNIC, Emirates ID and similar) | Identity | Yes | Until replaced |
| Driving licence | Identity | Yes | Until replaced |
| Visa, residence permit or Iqama | Identity | Yes | Until replaced — keep expired ones as residence history |
| Academic and professional certificates | Identity | Yes | Permanently |
| Bank and savings account details | Money | No — a scan is enough | While the account is open |
| Pension statements | Money | No | Permanently — the most commonly lost asset there is |
| Insurance policies (life, home, health) | Money | No | Life: permanently. Others: while in force, plus the claims window |
| Property deed or tenancy agreement | Money | Yes if the land is unregistered | While owned or tenanted, plus six years |
| Mortgage or loan agreements | Money | No | Until settled, plus six years |
| Tax returns and the records behind them | Money | No | At least six years in the UK; check your own jurisdiction |
| Share certificates and bonds | Money | Yes, if held on paper | Until sold |
| Vehicle registration and service history | Money | Yes | While owned |
| Warranties and receipts for major items | Money | No | The length of the warranty |
| Current medicines, doses and allergies | Health | No — this is a list you write | Update whenever it changes |
| Vaccination records | Health | Keep the original card | Permanently |
| Advance decision or living will | Health | Yes | Permanently; review every few years |
| The will | Instructions | Yes — absolutely | Permanently; replace on each new will |
| Lasting power of attorney | Instructions | Yes | Permanently |
| Funeral wishes | Instructions | No | Permanently |
| Who to contact: executor, solicitor, accountant | Instructions | No — a page you write | Review annually |
Retention periods are general guidance for a UK household, not legal or tax advice. Record-keeping requirements differ by country and by whether you are self-employed — check the official guidance for your own situation.
Questions
What is the single most important document to have?
The will, if there is one, and knowledge of where the original is. Everything else can be reconstructed with time and effort. An original will that nobody can find is treated by the courts in England and Wales as though it may have been deliberately destroyed, and the estate is then distributed under the intestacy rules rather than according to the wishes written in it.
Are scans and photographs legally acceptable?
For most everyday purposes, yes — insurers, banks and employers routinely accept a clear scan and many now prefer one. They are not acceptable where the original is itself the legal instrument: a will, a share certificate, a deed to unregistered land, and in many cases a registrar-issued certificate, where an institution will want a certified copy from the registrar rather than your photograph of one.
How do I stop this becoming a huge scanning project?
Do the four-group list first and scan nothing. Most of the value is in knowing what exists and where — a single page listing the documents, their locations and the people to contact is more useful to your family than a hundred scanned utility bills. Scan the identity group next, because those are needed fastest and are hardest to replace, then stop until the next time you handle a document anyway.
Where should the paper originals live?
Somewhere fireproof and waterproof, in a place at least one other person knows about and can open. A home safe rated for documents is adequate for most households. A bank safe deposit box is more secure but has a well-known failure mode: access after a death can require exactly the documents that are inside it. If you use one, keep the will and the death-relevant papers outside it.
Should I keep documents for people who have died?
Keep the death certificate copies, the grant of probate, the final tax records, and anything relating to property that passed to you — six years is a common floor and permanently is safer for property. Personal identity documents can be destroyed once the estate is settled, though many families keep passports and certificates as records. There is no obligation either way.
Where Keepsake fits
Keepsake is our product, so read this part with that in mind. Everything above is true whether or not you use it, and most of it you can do with a folder and an afternoon.
Keepsake exists for the second half of this — the scans, the expiry dates and the "somebody else must be able to get in" problem. It stores documents in an encrypted file you hold, reads the expiry date off a passport or a licence as you add it, and reminds you before it lapses. The Family Vault shares a chosen document with a named person; the Legacy Kit splits a recovery key three ways so that any two of the three can open the vault if you cannot.
What it does not do is any of the paper part, which is most of the important part. It will not tell you where your will is, and it should not be the only place your family knows to look. The arrangement we would suggest whatever software you use: the paper originals in a fireproof box somebody else can open, a scan of everything in something encrypted, and one page telling your family that both exist.